Drama at feeding time

Yesterday morning I went to Bishan Park to look for the white-throated kingfisher and the yellow-vented bulbul I photographed few Saturdays ago. I found both of them at their usual haunt, the kingfisher as usual perched on the railing along the canal and the bulbul up in a tree beside a pond.

After taking some shots of both birds and having bitten by numerous mosquitoes, I decided to move along over to a pond to take a rest and to enjoy the light morning breeze. As I was walking towards the pond, I noticed two pacific swallow resting on a No Swimming sign board. I slowly inched my way to a nearby rock and setup my gear next to rock. After observing patiently for a while, I realised that those two were babies waiting for their parents to bring them food.

My patient was rewarded every time their parents brought back food to feed these hungry babies. Upon seeing their parents, the babies would open their mouths widely and called out loudly hoping to attract their parents' attention and hopefully the food would land in their mouth! The drama continues every time the parents came back with food.

Though the opportunities for good photographs are abundance, I was rather frustrated because my equipment just isn't responsive enough to capture all the actions in front of me. My lens is not long enough (300f4 + 1.7x teleconverter on a D300 = 765mm) and somehow I found the AF on my D300 is not as responsive as my D200 AF! This is a classic case of poor workman blaming his tools.....hahaha!

Anyway, even though I missed a lot of good shots, I still managed to get a few interesting ones. Due to some heavy cropping and pictures being taken with a teleconverter the shot is not as sharp as I would like them to be. Hopefully one day, I will save enough $$$$$ to buy a Nikon D3 and a 600mmf4 lens for my bird photography!

Bulbul in Bishan Park

There are quite a variety of birds in Bishan Park. I was walking around the park with my camera one Saturday morning and I chance upon this Bulbul near the pond. I stood there quietly and observe it flying from tree to tree searching for food. I waited till it get quite used to me standing around then slowly took up my camera to take pictures.

Hopefully next time I will have better luck with other birds!

Formula 1 Craze

On 30th March 2008, I waited for around 2 hours in the scorching sun just to catch a glimpse of Mika Hakkinen, 2 times F1 world champion, do a test drive along Padang! I was lucky to be standing right in front of the entrance/exit to the tentage where the Hakkinen is driving out from. I finally get to experience the sound and power of the F1 race car live.

I could not do much panning when Hakkinen was whizzing along because the road side is packed with F1 enthusiasts, everywhere I turn there's a head, hand or camera popping up in my lens.

The only console is I could still get some still shots when Hakkinen's car is being push to the starting line or before being pushed back into the tentage!